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The Keith Berry Photo Archive – Aston and Birmingham Canals

Morturn

Morturn

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Staff member
The Keith Berry Photo Archive

I came across several rolls of 35mm black and white negatives that I had not seen for many years. A few of these pictures were printed at the time and some of the prints were scanned and added into my album of Old Birmingham pictures, but I have just run all of these negatives through a video slide duplicator attached to my Olympus C-750 digital camera and to my eye they possess more clarity than the prints that had been digitised by a flatbed scanner. What do you think?

Aston and Birmingham Canals 1980s
 
7. Aston Canal 1980

This is the only 'cantilever' bridge on the Aston lock flight, cantilevered so that the towing rope for a 'butty' boat would pass underneath it if the boat was being towed by a horse, also on the far side was the wharf of Frank Knight, coalman who hired out towing horses and these used the bridge to cross to the towpath to pull the loaded boat up through 'the thick' (the next five locks are close together) the bridge you see replaced the cast iron one that received a direct hit with a bomb during the 'Blitz!'

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16. Birmingham City Canal 1980s

Andrew Hoyle Is the boat The Britannia, Second City Cruisers water bus. If it is, I now own this boat, but now restored back to working condition and back to the first name "Dove"

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17. Birmingham City Canal 1980s

This is at the top of Farmers Bridge locks sometime in the 1980's- I recognise the boat as owned by Ken Mullins who was the lock keeper here at the time - the lock keepers house is just to the right off the photo.

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20. Birmingham City Canal 1980s

It's difficult to portray a Birmingham canal scene as it should be seen, i.e. as it was built, because of the proliferation of the systematic high-rise uglification of the skyline as shown in the background here...

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21. Birmingham City Canal 1980s

this is the same view with the high rise detritus removed by editing.

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22. Birmingham City Canal 1980s

This view has had its modern high rise detritus edited out to show it more as it would (should) have been seen at the time.

This picture is historic for it shows the stop plank island at the junction of the BCN mainline and the Birmingham and Fazeley canal to the top of Farmers Bridge Locks. This island was built at the start of the last war in order to protect the railway tunnel between New Street station and Monument Lane. It was feared that a bomb dropping into the canal between here and the top lock would have meant that, had the top of the tunnel been breached, it would have been extremely difficult to stop New Street station from a major flood. In the event it was not needed but it left an awkward junction for boats to negotiate, It was eventually moved nearer to the centre of the canal and now is only an ornamental feature of no great use to boaters or the maintainance of the canal

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23. Birmingham City Canal 1980s

This view has had its modern high rise detritus edited out to show it more as it would (should) have been seen at the time.

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